ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the varying and sometimes competing interests of the Catholic Church, state governments, and medical authorities in the practice of the midwifery in Italy from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. It introduces the wider social world in which early modern Italian midwives practiced. The book then explores the origins of public maternity assistance in Italy. It also introduces midwives to a more 'scientific' and theoretically informed understanding of childbirth. The book considers how surgeons came to acquire the obstetrical skills that allowed them to intervene during the most complicated childbirth cases. It then explores moments of tension and conflict that arose between midwives and their communities and argues that midwives' relationships with their clients and their communities were neither static nor singularly harmonious.
